On Friday, Asian stock markets are seeing mostly rising trends, following the widely positive signals from Wall Street the previous night. This is despite earlier apprehensions that the next monetary policy change from the U.S Federal Reserve could lead to an increase in interest rates. However, Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, affirmed at a post-meeting that, in likelihood, the next major move from the Federal Reserve would be to decrease rates. Asian markets had a mixed closing on Thursday.
In Australia, the stock market is showing significant growth on Friday, building upon its gains from the day before, led by technology shares, and following positive signals from Wall Street. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index is moving past the 7,600 level. The major Australian miners, Beach energy, Woodside Energy, WiseTech Global, Xero among others are seeing substantial gains.
On the other hand, gold mining shares are demonstrating a weaker performance. Also, among the four major banks, Westpac and ANZ Banking are adding nearly 1 percent each, while Commonwealth Bank and National Australia Bank are seeing marginal growth.
Meanwhile, the Australian services sector continued its expansion in April, albeit at a slower pace, as per a survey from Judo Bank. The Australian dollar is trading at $0.658.
In Japan, the stock market remains closed due to Constitution Memorial Day. The U.S. dollar is trading in the higher 152 yen-range.
In other parts of Asia, Hong Kong is up by 1.3 percent, while New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan are higher by between 0.1 and 0.9 percent each. Only Indonesia is demonstrating a down-trend.
On Wall Street, the stock market fluctuated before moving notably higher, demonstrating an upward trend after a narrowly mixed closing on Wednesday. The Dow rose by 322.37 points or 0.9 percent to 38,225.66, the Nasdaq surged by 235.48 points or 1.5 percent to 15,840.96 and the S&P 500 advanced by 45.81 points or 0.9 percent at 5,064.20.
Conversely, the European markets had a mixed performance, with the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index climbing by 0.6 percent, and the German DAX Index and the French CAC 40 Index going down by 0.2 and 0.9 percent respectively.
Crude oil prices slightly fell on Thursday due to the easing of supply disruption concerns and apprehension about economic growth and energy demand projections. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for June ended down by $0.05 at $78.95 a barrel.
